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Managing people
Organisational
Management
T-Kit
3.1 Introduction
Who are the people ?
It has become a clich to say that an organisations most valuable resource is its people
but it is still true. And our people need to be
managed in a way which enables them to be
fulfilled in their work and to reach their potential for themselves and for their organisations.
The purpose of many European youth organisations is the development of people and so
it is perhaps wise that we start with those on
the inside be they paid or unpaid, volunteers,
staff or Board members. Each person whether
we see them as groups or individuals needs
to be managed and led in order to reach their
potential and to ensure that their efforts serve
the organisation in the most effective and efficient way.
Each person brings talents and skills and knowledge and experience into their work. For the
purpose of this T-kit we will call this collection competence. Each person has a unique
set of competencies which can be applied in
different ways and in different situations. For
example, an unpaid Board member may bring
years of financial management experience, the
skill to read and interpret balance sheets and
a real talent for explaining figures to others
with less experience. The down side might be
that this experience comes from a different
sector the commercial world where the driving force is profit and the Board member
might have difficulty balancing that with the
social objectives of the organisation. In contrast the youth worker with the ability to
relate well with young people on the street
and a natural talent in counselling, may have
difficulty keeping records of expenditure. Both
have a unique set of competencies and both
have a significant contribution to make to
the organisation. Managing people is about
making the most of those competencies, for
as much of the time as possible and ensuring
that they continue to develop.
This section of the T-kit is dedicated to the
issues of managing people. A significant proportion is given over to the concepts of team
working and leadership, as this forms the foundation on which much of the other material is
based. Having answered the question who are
the people?, the following chapters attempt to
answer the question How do we manage them?
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Organisational
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Suggestions
for training
Compare the Belbin
team roles (Fig. OM 11)
with those of your team
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Organisational
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Typical features
Positive qualities
Allowable weakness
Company worker
Conservative,
dutiful and predictable
Chairman
Shaper
Highly strung,
outgoing and dynamic
Proneness to impatience,
irritation and provocation
Plant
Individualistic,
serious-minded
and unorthodox
Genius, imagination,
intellect and knowledge
Monitor evaluator
Sober, unemotional
and prudent
Judgement, discretion
and hard-headedness
Team worker
Socially orientated,
An ability to respond to
rather mild, and sensitive people and to situations,
and to promote team
spirit
Indecisiveness at
moments of crisis
Completer finisher
Painstaking, orderly,
anxious and conscientious
A tendency to worry
about nothing.
A reluctance to let go.
Source : Belbin, R.M. (1981) Management Teams, Heinemann ; reprinted by permission of Butterworth Heinemann
Publishers, a division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd.
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Organisational
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Task
needs
Team
maintenance
needs
Individual functions
Individual
needs
Attending to personal
problems
Praising individuals
Giving status
Recognising and using
individual abilities
Training the individual
An effective leader
A) Is aware of task needs, team maintenance needs and individual needs of his group
B) Has the skill and training to meet those needs, in accordance with the priorities of the situation
Source: Adair, John (1983) Effective Leardership : a Self Development Manual, Aldershot : Gower ISBN 0-330-28100-3
3
the needs (or demands!) of one or two members of the group at the expense of group
cohesion and common understanding, the same
will happen. Furthermore, if we constantly focus
on the task to be achieved, without attending
to building up the group of people as a team,
or to the development needs of each individual, then we can expect achievement to be
difficult to sustain and potentially off target.
As teams are fluid and dynamic, so leadership
needs to be both flexible and dynamic. The
so-called ruthlessness of famous world leaders
through history can perhaps often be interpreted as single minded commitment to a cause;
a commitment which followers share and which
overrides all other considerations. But in European youth organisations at the beginning of
the new millennium, democracy, shared decision making and a team approach are crucial
to the achievement of goals. While the phenomenon of leadership by personality still achieves
much; sustainable, empowering and inclusive
leadership is able to respond to a wider range
of needs with a wider range of solutions.
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A number of writers have blended their description of leadership style with their understanding of how teams develop. Their models can
help in assessing the appropriateness of a
particular style at a particular stage in the
development of a team.
PERFORM
NORM
New goals
Atmosphere of Honesty,
Tolerance and Listening
Deeper relationships,
understanding each others
values and contributions
Do task according to
individual and team abilities
Establish own
team disciplines
Develop assertiveness
Sells
Tests
Consults
Joins
Tells
Manager Thinks Plans Decides
Group
Submits Conforms Gives Assent
Sells
Manager Decides then puts decision to the
team to get agreement
Group
Listens to ideas and gives assent
Tests
STORM
FORM
Consults
Manager Presents problems to group and asks
for possible solutions then decides
Group
Participates in the thinking and solving of problems but not in the decision or control
Joins
Manager Shares all decisions and control
Group
Shares control and becomes
a democratic body
Positive direction
Creativity
Initiative
Flexibility
Open, honest relationships
Commitment, pride in the
team, team spirit
Maturity
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Style
Democratic
Leader
Led
Task
Context
Reproduced by permission from B600 The Capable Manager The Open University, 1994.
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3
Without the satisfaction of the lower order of
needs (1, 2 and 3) then the higher ones will
not be relevant.
As we consider the people we manage it, would
seem that effort first needs to be put into meeting the lower order needs the dissatisfiers
Herzbergs hygiene factors. Often, but not
exclusively, our organisations can say that
those lower order needs have been met and
that the role of the manager is to focus on
meeting higher needs such as achievement,
recognition, self esteem, personal development
and self realisation.
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Self-realisation
Growth
Personal Development
Accomplishment
Self Esteem
Self Respect
Status
Recognition
Social
Belonging to group(s)
Social Activities
Love
Friendship
Safety
Security
Hunger
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Thirst
Sleep
Etc.
Organisational
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3.2.3 Empowerment
The concept of empowerment is intertwined
with all of this. Referring to the Tannenbaum
and Schmidt model in the previous section
(Figure 13), we can see that leaders (and/or
managers) can retain or devolve power to others
through their style of leading (or managing).
Empowerment need not necessarily imply that
the power is handed over from one in authority
to a subordinate. Some thinkers would argue
that everyone has the power already and all the
empowerer does is enable the realisation of it.
In working with young people in particular, we
need to consider where we are withholding or
over burdening them with power and where we
are disempowering by not enabling their knowledge or abilities or creativity to come forward.
We return again to the idea that the purpose of
many of our organisations is to enable young people to reach their full potential. An empowering
attitude to the management of those who work
with us is primarily about realising the full potential of the human resource of the organisation.
Finally, we need to consider again the dynamism
factor. People and organisations change, as do
their environments and contexts. This has to
affect motivation: Through past experience
(upbringing, education, experience in and out
of work); through their present situations (the
individuals own perspective and ones own
view of the perspectives of colleagues); and
through our perceptions of the future (prospects
in this organisation and outside, personal aspirations, paid or unpaid). The young volunteer
who has a stable family background, good education and the encouragement of peers and
leaders will have a very different kind of motivation to the person without such encouragement
and whose previous experience is of failure
or rejection. Both may be well motivated, but
the combination and origin of the hygiene
and motivating factors outlined above, may be
very different. Maslows highest needs centre on
personal growth and the realisation of potential.
An empowering approach, built on an awareness
of and commitment to meet the progressive
needs of those we work with, is the route to
motivation in all parts of our organisations.
3.2.4 Responsibility
In a world where legislation is increasingly
used to highlight and define responsibilities,
managers need to consider their responsibilities at several levels.
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that many of our organisations are values driven is sometimes at odds with the hard realities of running programmes with very limited
resources. This can lead to compromise when
it comes to the amount of time and money
devoted to learning. We can however, identify
some key features of organisations which would
be classed as learning organisations.
At the heart of this concept is the idea that
organisations develop through the individual, personal development of those who work
in them. Some key principles are outlined in
the bullet points below.
The benefit and value of continuing development is recognised by staff and volunteers
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A further temptation is that we insist on training courses as the only way in which we learn.
The term training and development is recognised to include more than simply going on
courses and the word learning is becoming
widely used as a catch all for any experience
which, when appropriately facilitated, leads
to personal growth. As managers of learning
organisations we need to be open to seeing
opportunities for our staff which will help
them grow and consequently be more effective in their jobs. This might relate to competence including knowledge and skills or it
might relate to motivation or self confidence
or team working. It might also relate to the
perspective from which an individual looks
on a problem or on the organisation itself, for
example, a visit to another branch of your
organisation or even to an other organisation
all together, may result in the member of staff
seeing a problem differently and consequently finding a previously overlooked solution.
Examples of non-training-course learning
opportunities include job shadowing, (where
a staff member or volunteer spends a period
of time along side another worker literally
being their shadow, either in the organisation or in a different organisation, to see what
that job entails and how that person does it),
on the job training, conference attendance,
learning sets.
Assessment of work performance is mentioned
later in this section but it is worth noting here
the value of both planning learning in the context of a regular work review and of recording and accrediting any learning which does
take place. Personal development logs are an
ideal tool for this.
Organisational
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T-Kit
The reality of many European youth organisations is that they are not learning organisations.
There is too frequently a lack of induction into
the organisation itself and it is often the case
that paid staff work very much in isolation
sometimes at odds with their Boards of Management. The ability to network either within
your own organisation or with others in similar ones is a crucial part of the Learning
Organisation in practice.
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the setting of Key Results was too mechanical. The mechanism normally associated
with the process meant that there was a
strong preference for quantitative targets
and that these targets may not have led to
the business performance which was sought.
Given that the whole process was linked
with financial reward then it is easy to
understand resistance to being processed
in this way. The temptation for large organisations to adopt this or variations of this
system, is obvious. Uniformity and objectivity as well as precision are all proposed
as advantages.
3. Feedback must be clear and constructive.
Only the set and agreed criteria can be
used to make judgements and all available
evidence should be used. Where further evidence is available but has not been collected, opportunity to do so should be given.
Where inconsistencies arise then these
should be clarified and resolved. Giving and
receiving feedback can be very divisive
and it is essential that both are done with
sensitivity and honesty. The idea of the
hamburger top and bottom made up of
positive comment, praise and recognition,
and the middle made up of points for
improvement is a common approach to
this. Feedback needs to be well timed, accurate, specific, relevant and must point to
the future.
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Directive
Facilitative
Characteristics
Characteristics
No telling
Tells
No Questioning
Listens
Little Listening
Useful
to solve an immediate, urgent or
Stressful problem
Useful
to develop coachees confidence
open up their potential
Effective Coaches :
Operate flexibly along the spectrum to meet circumstances
Ineffective Coaches :
Tend to operate directively but without sensitivity
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3
The model below shows the importance of
relationship within the coaching process. Trust
enables a relationship which can then approach
a number of objectives in a cyclical manner.
Feedback is an essential part of coaching. If
Coaching is about helping people fill the gaps in
their performance, then feedback is the letting
people know how well they have filled the gaps.
Giving feedback requires skill and is both the
result of and the reason for the trusting relationships mentioned earlier. As a practical check
list, consider the following:
1. Start and finish on a positive note think of
feedback like a hamburger, with positive
comments being the bun and items for
improvement being the meat in the middle.
2. Concentrate on facts and be prepared to
give specific examples.
3. Think about your body language. What
signals are you giving through your posture and eye contact (or lack of it)!
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3.4.2 Mentoring
While coaching is generally seen as a tool used
by a manager, mentoring in common modern
usage is often, but not exclusively, a relationship which happens outside of the manager/subordinate situation. The word comes from
Greek mythology where Ulysses entrusted
his son to the care of his old friend Mentor.
Coaching and counselling are often used to
mean mentoring, but it is hoped that this section will provide a sufficiently clear distinction
between the three.
In the introduction to David Clutterbucks book
Everyone Needs a Mentor 1991 a great range
of definitions are given. In brief, phrases like
mixture of parent of peer, a role model, a
guide, a coach and a confidant, a protected
relationship in which learning and experimentation can occur, potential skills can be
Organisational
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TRUST
RELATIONSHIP
OBJECTIVE
3
OPTIONS
REVIEW
PLAN
EVALUATE
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developed and in which results can be measured in terms of competencies rather than
curricular territory covered.
Mentoring then is about personal growth which
does not have to relate to the job of the protg
directly. It has the character of a long term
relationship in which an individual is encouraged to explore, discuss, experience, discuss
some more, and maybe draw some conclusions
along the way. The trust and integrity are crucial once again, as is long term commitment
from both mentor and protg.
Some people choose mentors from outside
of their organisations whilst others prefer
the closer understanding of the organisation brought by a colleague. Peer mentoring
in young organisations, or those which are
only staffed by young people can be equally
beneficial. It can also be a mutually beneficial
process particularly if a staff member is mentored by a volunteer or Board member.
MENTORS
Manage the relationship
Encourage the protg
Nurture the protg
Teach the protg
Offer mutual respect
Respond to the protgs needs
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3.4.3 Counselling
Counselling is another word which we find
being interchanged with others and being
used in a range of different contexts. For the
Organisational
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Encourage
Ask
Reflect
Summarise
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